ARSENAL

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


ARSENAL is a Neon Genesis Evangelion Deconstruction Fic by the Sage of Toads that is no longer hosted by Andrew Joshua Talon on fanfiction.net. The first twelve chapters are still available in the Wayback Machine.

Starting out as your typical Peggy Sue fare, ARSENAL dispenses with that notion and wastes no time in establishing that Shinji is an insane, brilliant, and completely amoral young man with an extensive agenda. Armed with the knowledge of the future, training, and careful planning, he intends to not only avert the future that is canon, but do it in the most gloriously violent and over-the-top fashion possible.

Not to be confused with the football club of the same name.

Tropes used in ARSENAL include:
  • And I Must Scream: Gendo is shot repeatedly and left bedridden at the end of the coup. Later on, before he is moved to Terminal Dogma to remove all sense of time from him, Shinji returns and beats his invalid father with a hammer, shattering his jaw and rendering him incapable of speech.
  • Anti-Hero: Shinji, an indisputable Type V.
  • Ax Crazy: Shinji's first official act in the story is to bash a pay phone in for failing to connect him to his father. This is followed swiftly by him holding NERV hostage with a suitcase nuke. And that's just the beginning.
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Ramiel's arrival at the very end of Chapter 8 has been hailed as this.
  • BFG: Kensuke gets a 20mm anti-materiel rifle.
  • Brick Joke: Early into the story, Shinji mentions that he can kill someone with wet paper and a paper clip. Guess what happens in chapter 10?
  • The Chessmaster: Shinji constantly makes references to playing chess, and lives up to it by predicting everything that happens during the entire Black Bunnies arc. Notable in that none of them are part of his foreknowledge but he's able to recognize every single ploy they attempt to stop him.
  • Curb Stomp Battle: Directly invoked in the fight between Sachiel and Unit 01.
  • Death by Sex: Mercutio suspects that this is going to happen to him after Satsuki lays him and tries to defy it, but fails.
  • Deconstruction Fic
  • Determinator: Shinji fights Ramiel after receiving several blows, each the equivalent of a shotgun blast to the chest. He follows this up while still recovering by having a knockdown drag-out brawl with Satsuki and essentially surviving on will alone.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Pulled on Aoi.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Gendo is disgusted by Shinji's treatment of Aoi, and even near-Villain Protagonist Shinji is disgusted by the stuff Gendo and SEELE are responsible for in canon.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: Shinji reveals to Gendo that all three of the Black Bunnies have been infected with nanomachines that play havoc with their nervous systems; each was then subjected to horrific punishments that have completely broken them.
  • For the Evulz: Shinji invokes this occasionally. He's been known to carry a baseball bat to big fight scenes just so he can beat someone to death with it. What he does with Satsuki is even more horrible.
  • Freaky Is Cool: Touji and Kensuke's opinion on the eyeball Pen-Pen plucked from a SAS trooper that is now kept in a jar.
  • Freudian Excuse: Aoi claims that Satsuki and Kaede have this. Misato slaps it down as "a shitty excuse".
  • Gorn: Lots and lots of graphic violence. Special mention goes to Pen-Pen in chapter 11.
  • Fun with Acronyms: A Really Sadistic Evangelion... Now Action Laser! You try.

Sage Of Toads: Yes, it's an acronym, and no, I'm not telling you what it means. You'll have to find that out for yourself.

  • Grey and Black Morality: It would almost be more accurate to say Black and Black Morality, but Shinji's altruistic motives manage to make him half a shade grayer than the people he's fighting. His motives, however, are just about the only thing keeping him from being a Complete Monster.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Shinji's behavior comes down to fighting people ruthless and efficient beyond measure, meaning he has to be willing to hold nothing back in order to win. The punishments dealt to the Black Bunnies and the petty motives for such (revenge, getting a new bodyguard, etc), none of which contribute to stopping Third Impact in any way, push him completely into "monster" territory if he wasn't there already.
  • I Call It Vera: Shinji names all of his weapons. Sterling example: "Hiroshima-kun" for his suitcase nuke.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Ai puts a belt sander and reciprocating saw (among other tools) to good use in Chapters 10 and 11.
  • In Love with Your Carnage: Satsuki.
  • It's All About Me: Aoi says something to this effect.
  • Kick the Son of a Bitch: Shinji's punishments of Gendo and the Black Bunnies are twelve shades of this.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: The ultimate fate of Kaede. The overwhelming pain caused by the nanomachines leaves her in such a state that she refuses to even try and remember what happened before she became a bodyguard for the Suzuharas.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • Shinji's punishments for the Black Bunnies
    • His reveal that the nanomachines had originally been developed by NERV as a means to control the pilots through sensory deprivation works as this for Gendo.
  • Little Miss Badass: Ai Suzuhara, Touji's sister who avoided injury thanks to the above-mentioned Curb Stomp Battle.
  • Meaningful Name: "Roach" is the sole survivor of the SAS men.
  • Motive Rant: A short one in chapter 11 is given by Aoi
  • Necessarily Evil: Shinji's view of himself.
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Ai Suzuhara, again, when she is introduced in Chapter 9.
  • Number Two/The Dragon: Misato is either to Shinji.
  • An Offer You Can't Refuse: Mr. 850 threatens to put Roach in jail on false premises to find out what happened in Tokyo-3.
  • Only Sane Man: Hikari and Maya both qualify as this. Fuyutsuki as well, but he's playing along.
  • Papa Wolf: Touji saved Ai from a Near-Rape Experience and saves her from Kaede as well.
  • Pay Evil Unto Evil: Cited specifically as the reason for the Black Bunnies' torturous fates.
  • Peggy Sue: Shinji somehow has complete knowledge of how things went in canon!Evangelion, including End, and seems to be haunted by Asuka's final words.
    • Early in the first chapter, he claims that he experienced it all in dreams, over and over, after Gendo abandoned him.
  • Refuge in Audacity: The only reason most will be able to take most of the events as they unfold without screaming in horror is simply because it's too outrageous to believe -- even in-universe.
  • Samaritan Syndrome: Alluded to; Shinji recognises that he's not God and doesn't let himself be guilt-tripped about it.
  • Shout-Out:

Blood for the blood god!


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